I could do it in post I suppose... I think I need to use textures because my ability with procedurals to establish a pencil effect is non existant.

I guess the best description is if I were doing a drawing on a tinted paper, then I use the eraser to rub off the pencil marks to establish my highlights - which are in fact my original tinted paper - and not white

edit: okay it had a simple answer combination of light and ambient light while changing the degree of shadow gives me close to what I want thankyou - derr I am blind :)

oh any clues on getting a pencil effect with procedurals very very much appreaciated

Will the non-photo real renderer work for you? I figure you probably have a reason you aren't using it but just thought I would bring it up just in case it slipped your mind.

Alternatively there are some things you can do with the "Angle" and "Lit" nodes included in the Shoestring Shaders. I don;t have them installed on my new machine yet so can't give exact steps but I know you can use them to create masks based on viewing angle and light position. This allows for some fun toon effects in the photoreal render.

I think this would be easier to do in post processing. I've attached an example of a render that I did, converted it to black and white and then post processed it in a Mac program called AutoPainter. There are a lot of programs that do this kind of effect. you can tweak settings to get exactly what you want.

The unphotoreal renderer isn't reallydoing it for me. especially in it's treatment of eyelashes. I wonder if there is a way to make our own brushes for that - as it appears to be close, but not close enough , if you know what I mean?

Thanks so much for that link to your video. Yes I saw that video two years ago and I think that inspired me. I have those shaders but whenever I read the destructions my brain infarcts - so when you get a chance I would love some hints ;) ;)

I actually sat down and went through them again last night but can't hit on the right combination - its obviously trial and error. It's a good idea the pencil textures - they have been my most successful attempts so far combined with post

Brian:

Thank you too, I have been looking at a few of those programs and see that they are pretty good, I'll check that out. I had sucess this morning with some tutorials I found involving minimum pass filters and then using the dodge and burn tools to refine the result. So maybe a combination would work - human intervention and cpu intervention?

Milo,

I was checking out the Digital Carvers stuff last night, but it only gave me half a render before it went invisable - so I really didn't get much joy :) But I have my eye on them. I also tried Yatoon, for Carrara 7 which seems not too bad but not quite what I am seeking.

Hm. Not perfectly clear on what you're looking to accomplish. Are you trying to just do black and white lines?

I've always accomplished this by doing the non photo sketch render on green and then keylighting it in AE. But you're right about the eyelashes, which is why I stack my renders.

Without keylighting capabilities I guess you could still work with transparent PNGs right? So you render out your sketch layer, you then open up the texture maps for whoever the character is, find their eyelashes, make a copy of it, color over the eyelashes with solid black and then replace the old eyelashes, go into the render, turn off the alphas on everything except the eyelashes, render it as a PNG with transparent background, and then stack your eyelashes render atop your sketch rendering.

Personally I wouldn't go to all that trouble just for some eyelashes. I like to get in there and hand color all the existing textures and then use long brushes in the sketch render to give it a gritty look. But for black and white I think this would work.

Thanks for the outline methodology BC RICE. Ah yes, its no problem to pinch the non photosketch renders and use them with the eyelashes , the NPR is most useful for me as an outliner, probably more of a problem with hair made with transmaps I think, to tidy it up in post.

Yes I like the idea of black and white at the moment. I'm trying to widen my portfolio and this is something that will help me.

Black and white tends to be have less of a CG look sometimes. And I have been colouring it with water colour brushes in photoshop - using the NPR outliner as a separator for the individual sections of the image.

As an eg of what I admire and sort of would like to do ...

This is a piece by the guy who illustrated Jumanji and Zathura , both briliant works in black and white - well what I have seen at least. He uses a textured board under his paper to get his effects in Zathura - very effective. This is a poor example I am a afraid.

I spent a few hours today trying to simualte a few textures if PDPro - not a bad program of sorts. Would have been quicker to get a graphite pencil and draw them though ;)

This is about where I am with tooning DAZ folks. This is done strictly in Carrara using YaToon and fooling around with the textures. I'm happy enough with it. I'm still undecided about whether or not to use sketch layers. I suppose it'll depend on the project.

I just did some messing around and made this filter which adds various sketchy type effects.

Good stuff. Man, if Filterforge came with an AE counterpart in the package I'd be all over this. $140 (which is the sale price) might be too rich for my blood. I know you can do PNG sequencing through Photoshop and could grab renders that way, but I pretty much stick to AE for moving things.

They have a free download (stand alone and plug-in) version,. so it's not limited to just being a PS plug-in, although it's better inside PS.
and they offer a system of awarding points for uploading filters you make,.
so it's possible to make some filters using the free version, ..earn points, and get the full version, ...or at least a discount. :)

I've spent hundreds on packs of filters like Eye-candy, which are still great plug-ins, but with filter forge I can make my own, or download free filters from the library.

I also use Xara designer pro, for vector drawing, and it can use PS Plug-ins as "live effects" on vector artwork, so, I can also use Filter forge there.

I agree with you,.. It would be great if it had animation properties, and could be used inside AE,
but you can still use the filters to create all sorts of masks and textures and use those in AE, either as 2D masks or as 3D layers.

I'm doing some illustrations with Carrara and I would like an effect where the light source washes out the texture but doesn't give me pure white.

IE the maximum highlight might be a light grey , but at this point there would be no texture showing.

Any advice on what plug ins if anything or settings in Carrara to do this?

I am rendering mat objects that wouldn't work if they looked shiny

edit also looking for advice (after Dougs' comment) on making a pencil effect with procedurals :)

thanks in advance

After reading the thread I don't think I understood your question properly, but what I did think of was a digital carver's plugin that lets you take final render and do things based on that. I don't think what I wrote makes sense and I don't have an example handy, but to try and restate: what it allows you to do is have carrara do a render of a pixel and use that information to determine how it should *really* be rendered. It is slow as a result, but was the only way I could find to get a particular effect in Carrara.

Honestly, if you are considering getting anything from digital carvers -- email him. He knows his products in and out and has given me good advice.

Both images look amazing. Can you recap exactly how youdid them. The thread is a little hard to follow. Mayne it's just me. I'm assuming you did a normal render in Carrara and then post processed them in VirtualPhotographer.

That's about it..
I rendered the full colour image in Carrara,.. then ran it through "virtual photographer" in photoshop,
just clicking through the different pre-sets, playing with it.
I think I used "Steely satin", and changed the film grain to 800 ASA.

lovely images 3dage, like that middle one especially,
that software also does a nice 1600 asa as well. BTW great destroyed temple! those Greeks should have used more glue :)

gaffer2, thanks that Fotosketcher does a good job!

thoromyr, I will email him, great idea!

Brian, thanks :) I used 3dage's shader on 'everything', put a semi transparent vertical plane behind the robot to add backgroud texture, (you can see where it meets the ground at the shadow, rendered with shadows at say 50 percent and some ambient occulison I think, in post I use Fotosketcehr to add a little pencil work then adjusted the layer transparency between original render and Fotosketcher render to taste, then I ran it through 'pumicegoldengirl' (where do they get these names?) filter in that software I posted above (opticverve?)

with Fotosketcehr you can copy image to clip board via the edit menu, great time saver, saves saving each file (which I have been doing for a while till I twigged :(